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Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

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Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#181
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what you said was true maybe five years ago. There used to be quirky geek types being ironic all the time and making cool stuff. When I left though it was all Nazis and people who somehow stand Nazis 'interjecting' every few comments about the IQ of black people or evil SJWs. This can drain even the kindest, strongest soul. Even moot got tired of it and sold it to that Japanese con man.

Huh? I just looked through the /diy/ board catalog and saw nothing like that. http://boards.4chan.org/diy/catalog

Mention you are black or post a picture hinting you are non-white and you'll see them crawl out of the woodwork.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#182
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that nobody knows how to cite it, it's that nobody wants to cite things from outside of academia, perhaps because it lowers their own perceived prestige. I have seen this in computational linguistics where people frequently don't cite their data sources, which often come from outside of the field or outside academia altogether. Instead they put a link to a webpage in a footnote, which does nothing for assign…

Why would you cite a paper on the technical details of your data source in linguistics?

You want reproducibility, the results will be affected a lot by your data source, real citations enable tools like google scholar. Why not cite? I see only drawbacks in continuing with the footnote/no citation trend.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#183
post #86
post #73

It is a fun little event that something posted on 4chan is used in a research paper. But that nobody knows how it should be cited is just plain wrong. They should maybe contact their research library and get a introduction to citing. All citation styles I know of can handle web citations. Anonymous authors is nothing new either. And you have things like the internet archive or Webcite[0] to make sure the web document…

It's not that nobody knows how to cite it, it's that nobody wants to cite things from outside of academia, perhaps because it lowers their own perceived prestige. I have seen this in computational linguistics where people frequently don't cite their data sources, which often come from outside of the field or outside academia altogether. Instead they put a link to a webpage in a footnote, which does nothing for assign…

> It's not that nobody knows how to cite it, it's that nobody wants to cite things from outside of academia, perhaps because it lowers their own perceived prestige.

Such is academia, I guess. It’s more important to get “prestige” than to properly cite someone else’s work-where it was published should not matter.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#184
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" is a 14-episode anime adaptation which aired in 2006. The first version to be correctly. They later added another 14 episodes, but instead of calling it a new season, they mixed in the new episodes between the old episodes and rebroadcasted it as one complete series. As a special "joke", they also had a timeloop-story spanning multiple episodes, with each episodes telling the sam…

The Endless Eight was widely regarded as a rite of passage in anime spheres. A lot of people would end up skipping the second half after they realized what was going on. Great show, and as far as I know the only one to have attempted something like this. I personally didn't like it, it just seemed soooooo long. The only redeeming factor (in my opinion) is that Suzumiya Haruhi is outlandish enough for it to be the per…

The act did have some thematic significance with the movie release in 2010, in which the time loop incident is revealed to be a major reason why the movie's events took place.

Besides, it's a little harder to skip all eight episodes in the original weekly broadcast not knowing when the loop will end, so viewers are more or less forced into the cycle.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give you a counterpoint, I've read plenty of computer science and mathematics papers where someone cited an arXiv paper by an obscure or unknown researcher. I've even seen blog posts and email correspondence cited. In fact, in one of my own papers I cited an unpublished manuscript which you can't even find on the internet - you have to personally contact the author, who hasn't touched the thing in the last 25 year…

I think the difference is that arXiv papers don't have the same perceptions of low prestige attached as a random blog or a 4chan thread does. The issue isn't that the work is (yet) unpublished or that its obscure: its that it is from outside academia or traditionally prestigious sources.

>academia or traditionally prestigious sources.

You can't really put ArXiV and "traditionally prestigious sources" in the same sentence. Any crackpot can (and does) post on ArXiV.

The reason why I'd be more comfortable citing a paper on ArXiV than a random web page (as a mathematician):

1. ArXiV is the archive for papers. You put something there, it's not going away. You can't even remove your own paper once you make it public there[1]. It's a reliable place I can refer people to.

Personal websites? Well, my own very reliable academic web page has been removed by sysadmins without notice after graduation because "we don't maintain accounts".

2. Unrelated content. ArXiV won't have it - unlike, say, the 4chan thread in question. Do I really want to explain to people that I wasn't citing getting "14 * 14! derps out of the way"?. Not to mention ads, memes and NSFW content - which is also there[2][3]

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The other reasons are less important, but are still valid:

3. Presentation. Something on the ArXiV probably is formatted and structured like a readable paper; there are baseline expectations. Reading someone's scratchwork is borderline painful, and a proof on a webpage is usually just that.

Compare [3] to a rewrite[4] - which one is easier to understand at a glance?

4. Reputation. This is different from "traditional prestige". The reputation of ArXiV is that most of the people who do serious work put it there. Most of the people produce nonsense (possibly including yours truly) also put it there, but the probability of any work having been done by someone who is willing to put effort into it goes down dramatically if the work is not on ArXiV.

5. Signaling. Since it's so easy to post there, any work not ArXiV is signaling "I don't care about my work being available to other people in the field". Why one read something that the author doesn't want them to? If they did, they'd put it on the ArXiV.

6. Attribution. A result on ArXiV makes it easy for me to attribute the result to someone. A thread on 4chan? Do I attribute it to everyone who participated? A single anonymous author?

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In short: people give credit to blackboard scribbles and napkin proofs that came out of discussions at conferences, but you won't see "4th beer coaster, such-and-such conference banquet, 2018" as something that people cite.

A proof on 4chan is somewhere in the same category.

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The disclaimer here is that this applies mostly to new results in mathematics. Old results are not necessarily available online, and often we don't have a choice. Practices in other fields might be different.

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[1] https://arxiv.org/help/withdraw

[2]https://warosu.org/sci/thread/S3751105#p3751197

[3]http://4watch.org/superstring/

[4]https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=forums&srcid=MTUwMTUx...

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#186
post #67

This might be a ghost discussion. I have worked in scientific publishing for quite some time and have seen citations in the form of: * personal correspondence * emails * facebook profile pages and my personal highlight * google search queries (I kid you not) All of these citations actually occured in scientific journals. I assume Nicolas Bourbaki was also cited several times, without anyone caring about "academically…

Wow I did this in high school but I got in trouble Citations: -Google -Nicolas Bourbaki -Rob’s Facebook wall -My friend in gchat

Hopefully you got in trouble for your poor citation format, not your sources.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#187
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scientists often abhor citing from blogs, forums, and Wikipedia, as those publications "are not peer-reviewed by trustworthy professionals". Which is sad because most peer-reviewed material are not trustworthy either. https://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/believe-it-or-not-most-pub... https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo... It's worrying that academia is slowly turning into a rigid "appeal to au…

> It's worrying that academia is slowly turning into a rigid "appeal to authority" church Seeing as how academia literally started out as an accessory to the various Christian denominations for educating priests, I don't see how you really could characterize it as "a space for truth and inquiry". It's only been relatively recently that "appeal to authority" has given way to more secular/scientific ways. Even within t…

My advisor used to say that old professors contribute most to science by dying.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#188
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about someone crediting a webpage without attempting to attach the name of the author? I have never seen this in academic research, ever. Can you link to an example? In the OP case, the 4chan author was anonymous. EDIT: > People _do_ publish papers about their data, and their citation counts are often extremely low, because research users continue to use footnotes instead. Are you talking about resear…

> Are you talking about someone crediting a webpage without attempting to attach the name of the author? I have never seen this in academic research, ever. Can you link to an example? Let's continue with the Google Ngrams example. All I had to do was search Google Scholar for "Google Ngrams" to find easy examples on the first page of results, like this one: http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W14-1611 The paper is writte…

It's a different topic because the OP dispute (whether to give credit to data generation/creation as comprehensively as to data analysis) is logically distinct from the OP dispute (whether to give different amounts credit to the same sort of contribution based on where/whether it was formally published). The fact that the people you criticize continue to not properly give credit even when a formal publication exists demonstrates this starkly.

For what it's worth, I agree with your criticism.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is that arXiv papers don't have the same perceptions of low prestige attached as a random blog or a 4chan thread does. The issue isn't that the work is (yet) unpublished or that its obscure: its that it is from outside academia or traditionally prestigious sources.

>academia or traditionally prestigious sources. You can't really put ArXiV and "traditionally prestigious sources" in the same sentence. Any crackpot can (and does) post on ArXiV. The reason why I'd be more comfortable citing a paper on ArXiV than a random web page (as a mathematician): 1. ArXiV is the archive for papers. You put something there, it's not going away. You can't even remove your own paper once you make…

It's up to professors. I've had very important work taken by professors and published by them from my websites without attribution - even my own old professors! They think theft is fine if you aren't a fellow pirate, apparently. Arxiv is used by fellow pirates, so it's off limits, on this view.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#190
post #56
post #47

Looking at this from the other side, if a non-mathematician "solves an interesting problem", is there a recommended way to make the solution public? Something better than posting to 4chan? Is it possible to publish a result properly if one is not a mathematician and not affiliated with an institution?

You can send it to a journal as a private individual, but probably a better way would to post a manuscript on arxiv.org, and once it generates certain buzz (if the problem is interesting and well solved) then either submit it to a journal yourself or partner with other mathematician to polish it, etc. and then submit.

To be able to submit to arXiv, one needs to be endorsed by someone in the domain, which could be a potential hurdle for someone not in academia. (and I'm not about to suggest viXra as a way to get around that)
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